A Woodland Weekend

I've just spent a long weekend camping in woodland near Battle in Sussex. I participated in a workshop led by Martin Jordan (http://www.ecotherapy.org.uk/) which looked into psychotherapy in the outdoors. The combination of experiential work in the woods, and the sharing of ideas and thoughts was an incredibly rich learning experience. And there is more too it than that.

As I write this I am sitting in my flat in Wimbledon looking out into the trees in the garden and on the Common beyond, I am very aware that I have brought more than just ideas to do with the work back home with me. I notice a feeling of connection with the greenery outside and yet I am also feeling very present in my indoor world. The television is on and from time to time I catch up with the latest in the financial crisis as I tap away on my keyboard.

Ecopsychologists talk about how as humans we have "split off" our relationship with the planet. Denying our essential relationship with the planet, believing ourselves to be something apart from the natural world. And that the excessive materialism and consequent environmental crisis is a direct result of this alientation from the very organism we depend on for our survival as a species.

In nature, there is a "self-regulation" that works. Maybe because it is a whole system. Perhaps the banks are in such a mess today because they were not regulated in terms of the whole system i.e. the governments left them alone. Having been watching the BBC's Big Cat Live, I can't help comparing this to taking the preditors off the Mara and watching the herd animals graze themselves into a desert and their own demise! The bankers left to their own devices have overgrazed, the system is lopsided, we need to let the preditors back in to regulate the system.

My experience of being out in the woods and coming back to the city has emphasised my place in the greater whole and has left me feeling peaceful. The world's financial crisis somehow put back in perspective. At one point on Sunday I lay alone in a sunny meadow munching on a sweet apple picked fresh from a lone apple tree. The sun, as it dipped low in the sky, picked out a network of fine spider webs that seemed to link every blade of grass in the field. Millions of spiders were at work doing what we all do, surviving as best we can on planet earth. And I am part of this web of connectedness, whether I realise it or not. Where I lay in the grass, hundreds of webs were destroyed. I can't avoid making an impact in the world. Every action, every meeting with another person or another creature changes something. A good example of Field theory, used by Gestaltists, that says everything is in some way connected.

My snooze in the meadow effected the spiders, the reckless City bankers are having an effect on the economy which in turn will impact me to a greater or lesser extent. The economy will recover and the spiders will continue spinning their web in the field.

I suspect the feeling of peace I'm left with today has something to do with my raised awareness of the interconnectedness of things, and my place in it.